Electric return to form

OMD, Manchester Academy

IT’S been 34 years since OMD released their first single, but on the evidence of this concert, they haven’t aged a day.

The electro-pop pioneers — still in their original line-up — have returned with their best new album since their early Eighties heyday.

This event was so joyous, so uplifting, at times it resembled a religious revival.

The set was largely drawn from the new album “English Electric”, and rightly so. For a start, it proves they are still relevant in today’s music scene, and secondly, because the new songs — “Metroland” and “Kissing the Machine” especially — are every bit the equal of their old classics.

For this gig, OMD ditched their more arty Kraftwerk tendencies in favour of non-stop uptempo hits, the crowd orchestrated by an enviously fit and energetic Andy McCluskey with his exhortation to “dance intelligently like idiots”.

And those hits just kept on coming, from the early “Messages”, “Enola Gay” and the two “Joan of Arcs”, through “Locomotion” and “Tesla Girls”, to “Sailing on the Seven Seas of Love” and beyond.

By the time we got to “Sister Marie Says”, the gig had turned into a euphoric dance party.

McCluskey stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt, and women threw their underwear at band co-founder Paul Humphreys during his occasional lead vocal slots: not something you’d get at an OMD gig of old.

Turning full circle, they closed with that single from 34 years ago — “Electricity” — as the decades simply fell away.